Wholeness and Virtual Communities

“The Jewel Net of Indra…Imagine a vast net: at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels. In the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight in every other jewel.”

As today the Iraq Study Group announces we need a new strategy – news flash! – they might consider how the war on terrorism is more of a war within the skin of a collective humanity, a War on Ourselves. Here’s some dimensions of that war.

According to Human Security Report, the nature of war is changing.

“With the demise of colonialism, one that had caused 81 wars since 1816, simply ceased to exist…Then the cold war came to an end – no more proxy wars…a growing number of preventive diplomacy missions by UN since 1991. So, War is mostly within states…”Between 1991 and 2004, 28 struggles for self determination were started or restarted, while 43 were contained or ended…Just 25 armed secessionist conflicts under way in 2004, the lowest number since 1976.”

“Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so ‘saturated’ into the urban fabric that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as ‘infestation’, seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.”

http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=1165

Writer Bruce Sterling once wrote that the war on terrorism is the same thing as the Internet bubble. Interesting then that the European Union initiative on the Information Society as within it a new program on Global Cybersecurity.

“The purpose of the Cybersecurity Gateway is to provide an easy-to-use information resource on national and international cybersecurity related initiatives worldwide. In today’s interconnected world of networks, threats can now originate anywhere – our collective cybersecurity depends on the security practices of every connected country, business, and citizen.”

I have had Neurosphere criticized by privacy advocates as the Panopticon, good only for evil surveillance purposes. This story indicates that kids are more attuned to the benefits, not merely the risks.

“AlwaysOn: What do you think of the phenomenon of being seen and seeing others on the Web? I think this passion to express yourself on, say, a MySpace profile is a generational thing. It’s becoming central to the new social lifestyles of young people.

Ross Levinsohn: I think it’s a sociological thing. The difference in generations is that young people are now programmed. Parents don’t want their kids roaming, so kids have gravitated to the Internet. Instead of going to the mall or the roller rink (as we might have done), they’re going online—and as a result, they’re expressing themselves differently. MySpace has benefited hugely from this trend: People are using their MySpace pages to express themselves. This represents a really interesting sociological change—and one that’s good for some and challenging for others.

“The war on terrorism as proclaimed by President Bush is the incipient form of conflict within a neurosphere, not across borders but within the skin of a single global entity. The war will not be confined to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or any small collection of countries. The Al Qaeda network is said to operate within more than 60 countries. It is a stunning fact that they operated most successfully in Florida, a state it will be hard for Mr. Bush to declare war upon. And it seems increasingly clear, after a year of war, that the supply of fresh recruits to the terrorist cause continues to grow.”

Sadly, nothing has changed in the ensuing four years, certainly not in the Bush Administration’s stupid inability to fight this war as anything different from any other game of cowboys and Indians. It is not even about more sophisticated intelligence capabilities to “find” the bad guys. The enemy is truly within – within the borders of the U.K., probably still within the U.S. Bush’s svengali Karl Rove keeps him on a message that makes sense to 51% of the population. Cheney and Rumsfeld keep a defense strategy going that does enriches Halliburton and other contractors and keeps political support coming in from that sector.

What’s still missing is a strategy from the opposition that goes beyond “out of Iraq”, something that reaches not only the strains of thought within fundamentalist Islam, but also the strains of thought within Christian fundamentalism that keep support for Bush’s “us or them” strategy going. A strategy that understands how group minds grow and develop and, so far, fail to truly evolve.

“Only through a rite of passage will humanity shift from the love of power to the power of love. This initiation will uproot and transform every aspect of human civilization. It will demand of humankind a new myth, one that insists on cooperation rather than competition, co-creation rather than procreation, networks rather than markets, and sustainability rather than exploitation. Waking the Global Heart is a handbook for this initiation, taking us on a journey through the twists and turns of our collective history.”

Steven Rockefeller of all people extolled the virtues of “The Earth Charter” in a recent publication of the American Teilhard Association.

“The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society for the 21st century. Created by the largest global consultation process ever associated with an international declaration, endorsed by thousands of organizations representing millions of individuals, the Earth Charter seeks to inspire in all peoples a sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the human family and the larger living world.”

http://www.earthcharter.org/

So in my community I’m trying to do things on a small scale (think global, act local), but networks and software slowly stitch together disparate efforts (nobody likes to feel they’re fighting a losing battle alone), and make possible ways to monitor progress that don’t require wading through mounds of data.

“The Earth Charter Community Action Tool is your guide to developing and implementing a community sustainability plan. Using EarthCAT, you will be able to learn from the experiences of other communities as you set goals and targets, develop strategies to achieve them, and select indicators for monitoring your progress towards a more sustainable future.”

http://www.earthcat.org/cgi/earthcat/index.html

“The [Santa Monica] Plan includes eight Goal Areas which, taken together, present a vision for sustainability in the community.”

Steven Rockefeller of all people extolled the virtues of “The Earth Charter” in a recent publication of the American Teilhard Association.

“The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society for the 21st century. Created by the largest global consultation process ever associated with an international declaration, endorsed by thousands of organizations representing millions of individuals, the Earth Charter seeks to inspire in all peoples a sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the human family and the larger living world.”

http://www.earthcharter.org/

So in my community I’m trying to do things on a small scale (think global, act local), but networks and software slowly stitch together disparate efforts (nobody likes to feel they’re fighting a losing battle alone), and make possible ways to monitor progress that don’t require wading through mounds of data.

“The Earth Charter Community Action Tool is your guide to developing and implementing a community sustainability plan. Using EarthCAT, you will be able to learn from the experiences of other communities as you set goals and targets, develop strategies to achieve them, and select indicators for monitoring your progress towards a more sustainable future.”

http://www.earthcat.org/cgi/earthcat/index.html

“The [Santa Monica] Plan includes eight Goal Areas which, taken together, present a vision for sustainability in the community.”

“As part of its effort to make offline information searchable online, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google.”

http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/print_library.html

“Three months after undertaking an ambitious project to digitize thousands of books, Harvard University Library (HUL) and the Google Print project are facing scrutiny from publishing organizations, who claim the project may infringe copyright law.”

“The metaphor of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) tries to picture a vision of the future where all of us will be surrounded by intelligent” electronic environments, and this ambient has claims to being sensitive and responsive to our needs. A multitude of sensors and actuators are already embedded in very-small or very large information and communication technologies, and it is only a question of time when better use can be gained from these complex (yet still extraordinarily primitive) technology systems. Pleasant or not, for the lonely human, researchers predict that AmI will be densely populated by IT gadgets and systems with potentially powerful NBIC capabilities (nano- bio- information and communication technology).”

“GridWise seeks to modernize the nation’s electric system – from central generation to customer appliances and equipment – and create a collaborative network filled with information and abundant market-based opportunities. Through GridWise, we can weave together the most productive elements of our traditional infrastructure with new, seamless plug-and-play technologies. Using advanced telecommunications, information and control methods, we can create a “society” of devices that functions as an integrated, transactive system.”

Teilhard’s vision of a “thinking layer” of interconnected minds is one in a long line of visions of unity and wholeness. Most religions and spiritual paths seek this unity; unity in God, or unity as God. Contemplation of wholeness as reflected in or demonstrated by technology may seem counter-intuitive at first. This section seeks to provide pointers to telecommunications and information technology, including the Internet, as means to a spiritual end.